How do weavers find inspiration?

By Amelia © January 18, 2012

With the new year, I am looking to re-inspire my fiber arts. Writing is always a joy, but life has kept me from pursuing activities as much as I would like. So a chance run-in with a local weaver and invitation to their guild meeting was too lucky to pass up.

And can you believe it, the topic was finding inspiration! A few of my fibery friends were there, and one handed me the feather you see above. The table was full of yarn, so finding colors was pretty easy. We chatted as we made "wraps", to sample color combinations and decide what colors were in our inspiration.



Wrapped samples like this are a common tool among weavers. They are a great way to sample colors and proportions. As I was winding mine to "match" my feather, it started working its way into my mind, firing off ideas of what to weave.

The feather and the colors reminded me of a color-and-weave I have not yet done, so I took the idea and worked with it, weaving a sample to see how it would look:



Plaid. Yes, not a 2/2 twill that would make it an authentic plaid, but symmetric stripes with border colors. I like it!

The fun part of the project was also the instant gratification -- one of the ladies cut matt board for us, so we can mount our inspiration and our sample weaving, frame it and have a new piece of art for our weaving corner. That is where mine will hang...

You can find inspiration in anything -- a rock, a feather, a picture, last year's calendar, furniture, the snow on the trees, a sunset. Look at it, explore its colors and textures, wrap or sample and wa-la! you will have made a new fabric that is all your own.

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© January 18, 2012 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I use my new espinner?

By Amelia © December 27, 2011

Did the holidays bring you an espinner? Lucky you! Here are some tips to help you transfer your wheel skills to your newest toy/tool.

With espinners, start out slow and find what pace works best for you. It's a different mindset from a treadle wheel, in that the motor speed is constant once it is set. With a treadle wheel, you can change speed with each push of a treadle. So your hands need to learn to move in a regular rhythm that matches the espinner's speed.

I tend to set the speed on my HansenCrafts espinner based on how fine I am spinning. I set it slower for thicker yarns and faster for finer yarns. Which wool breed it is isn't usually my focus, beyond realizing how thick or thin that breed likes to be spun. And when I am starting with a new to me wool, I start out slow and increase a little bit at a time until I find a speed that works for my hands, the fiber, and the yarn I want to produce.

When I am spinning fibers other than wool, I look at how slippery they are, and adjust accordingly. If it is more slippery, I use a slower speed to start until my hands have control of the fiber.

And with all fibers, I bring forward a philosophy I use on my treadle wheel as well... Only set e scotch tension brake just tight enough to draw fiber onto the bobbin. Tis is even more important with an espinner, because it's not your feet getting tired pushing against that break -- it's the motor working against it. Light tension ensures you get the most effort out of your motor.

Are you curious about but don't have one yet? HansenCrafts has a great page listing their competition here: http://hansencrafts.com/hansencrafts/misc_stuff/spinning_wheels_competitors.htm

Ravelry has both an electric spinners group and a HansenCrafts group, full of information about espinners.

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The one shown here is an early HansenCrafts espinner. I've since upgraded it to have a WooLee Winder and am looking forward to the new manual flyer HansenCrafts are developing.

© December 27, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I copy a sweater yarn?

By Amelia © November 8, 2011


I had this comment posted recently:



Just found your blog and hope it's not defunct. I'm a beginning spinner and a wannabe weaver, and I have a question about spinning. I would like to duplicate the weight and structure of Jamieson & Smith jumper-weight yarn to knit a Fair Isle Sweater. I have some of the yarn, so I can figure out TPI, etc., but I was planning on using a Shetlend fleece (being washed now in my bathtub) with app. 4" staple length and thought that combing it was the best way to process it. Is this (worsted style) the best way to try to duplicate J&S or would carding be better? BTW, my husband is laughing at me for deciding my first real objective (as opposed to just spinning yarn with no objective in mind) in spinning involves processing fleece, spinning it and dyeing it to knit a FI sweater. It probably will take me a long time to finish, as I've never knitted a FI sweater, either. But I have many steps before I get to the knitting. Thanks for your help!



There's noing like a question to motivate! It's been a busy summer...running into fall... Of self discovery and personal growth. Coming along nicely, with plans for teaching in 2012 forming (look for email news if you are on my teaching email list, or contact me to be added).

To focus on the question: the best way to determine what works is to sample. I have been copying Paternayan tapestry yarn, and though you'd expect it to be worsted prepared and spun, I get closer to the yards per pound with carded fiber spun woolen. YPP is a good measurement to take because it varies based on fiber prep and spinning style... Combed fiber spins into a denser fiber generally, and worsted style spinning also spins into a denser yarn. So for lighter yarn (more YPP for the same weight of fiber) use carded fiber and woolen spinning.

From what I've seen of J&S lace weight yarn, I would guess that carding might be better than combing, if their jumper-weight looks similar.

The main motivation to copying YPP is that your knit fabric will then have a similar drape, having about the same density. If you'd rather have a lighter sweater, woolen prep and spin; for a heavier one, worsted prep and spin. That said, parts of a sweater see a lot of wear, and worsted prep and spun does wear better (less pilling, typically) than woolen prep... So you might want to not only sample spinning, but also knitting. Let a small knit square live on your keychain for a while to see how it likes being dragged in and out of your purse.

In any case, have fun spinning! There's nothing like calking a big project and working your way through it.


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© November 8, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

When Do You Do Spring Cleaning?

By Amelia © April 5, 2011

A philosophy I find worth embracing is that you need to remove the things in your life that are blocking you when you want to make room for new things to happen. And in the spirit of that, I've been working on a rather thorough spring cleaning of tools lately.

From

I'm pleased to say the first three items went quickly at the Whidbey Spin-In, giving me the energy to return home and pull together the next 19. These are a significant step for me in reducing how much is around me, so I am free to focus on the weaving I love -- my rigid heddles, my mechanical-dobby equipped Baby Wolf, and my ever intriguing Bergman Counter-marche loom.

It's not always easy to decide what needs to go. Tapestry weaving, for example -- there is a lot I could do there, plenty of ideas that sprang to mind as I worked through a sampler and learned how to bubble and tie butterflies. But I know my heart is in functional cloth, for home textiles and clothing. So I use that knowledge of myself to create a space and a set of tools that enable it. The tapestry looms need to go to an artist making tapestries -- gorgeous works of art that enrich all of us with their vision.

And there are plenty of other spaces to tackle -- the bookshelves, the fiber cubbies, perhaps even the spindle racks (yikes! not those!) But I know, too, that focus comes in baby steps. Today was huge -- taking the pictures, researching second-hand pricing on the items, getting them posted on my website, ravelry, and weavolution. So now I will let myself enjoy the progress, not worry about the work remaining.

As Scarlett liked to say, "Tomorrow is another day!" and thank goodness for that.

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© April 5, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Are you playing with a full deck?

By Amelia © March 29, 2011

Yes, the title of this post is a little tongue-in-cheek. But there have been a lot of decks of cards in my life lately, concretely and figuratively. Much shuffling. There has been the juggle of retail, writing, and teaching fiber arts; a temp job that has gone on for a while; and big changes coming at home.

The fan of cards above is a 4-decker. Yep, I've been bitten by Hand-and-Foot, a really fun card game. You may know it by another name, I was googling for the finer points to teach it to my daughter, and found some variants are called Canasta. That made me laugh - my older friends play Canasta. It is a nice way to while away time and have pleasant conversation with friends - a new friend taught me. I look forward to more pleasant conversations over the decks.

The knitting? That's a swatch for my Learn to Knit More class - my new knitters were keen to continue learning techniques, so we are pursuing fun topics in the "More": knitting in the round, lace, cables, and short rows. That, added on to their basic vocabulary from Learn to Knit should send them well on their way into knitter-dom.

In my fiber life, card decks also play a hand. I've been playing with stripes in weaving lately -- how to design them, what rules there might be, that sort of thing. Color theory plays a role, and patterns like Fibonnaci. But randomness can also be fun, as you see in the scarves here.

The blue one has no neighbors the same -- completely random to the human eye, rather than striped. It works because it's monochromatic, all in the blue family. The red one has stripes of random widths. Now, I admit, when I did this, I was mainly working with leftovers -- stripe width was dictated by how much yarn I had left over.

Decks of cards are a great way to randomize stripe width. Take a deck, turn over a card. Discard 2's, Aces, Jacks, Queens, and Kings. If it's a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, do that many lengths of your color. Then turn over another card. The number on the card dictates the stripe width. We tossed 2's because it takes 3 ends to make a clear stripe, and face cards because, well, 10 is wide enough for my scarves. Wa-la, random stripes.

You shuffled, right? If you want truly random -- shuffle 7 times. Whew!

There are other number randomizer or pattern methods out there, another I ran across was using your phone number. Pick the colors you don't like to be the zeros (grin!)

When I turn 52 ... that's still a bit of a ways away ... I am going to have a "full deck" party :-) because I will have one, in years!

So, what do the changes mean? You may see shifts in my focus, changes at The Bellwether, and, I expect, plenty of me! Teaching and writing are very important to me, so I am putting together a path that includes those activities while I meet my responsibilities. Sharing with you the techniques and ideas that excite my fiber-life is always a pleasure - I surely appreciate the kind remarks on the blog, feedback from my students in workshops and my virtual students, who purchase the e-tutorials. Our audience grew a little bit this month as well, with the acceptance of my e-tutorials by PatternFish. More of them will appear there until they are all available; The Bellwether will still also provide them.

I know I don't often put my actual face on things but changes are afoot, and you may get more than my usual logo sheep or Facebook/Ravelry teapot in future. Hello, world! This is me (grin).

Happy spinning, weaving, dyeing, knitting, and shuffling!

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© March 29, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Five Tips For Spinning a Consistent Yarn

By Amelia © February 25, 2011

Wow! Madrona Fiber Arts Festival was a hoot! But more on that at the end...

Last summer, I was contacted by a tapestry weaver about spinning some "3 ply yarn" for her. In fact, the yarn she wanted mimiced in handspun was Paternayan's, which has 3 strands or fingering-weight 2-ply loosely twisted together. And, her plan was to separate them to color-blend (tapestry weaving is so cool!)

There was to be 10 pounds of fiber to be spun, from local sheep, locally dyed and milled at Taylored Fibers. 10 pounds. That didn't quite hit home until I (a) injured my foot in July, leaving me only e-spinning as a wheel choice and (b) got a temp job 4 days a week in September, which is still steaming along with a somewhat indefinite future.

Now, this 10 pounds isn't like the normal production run you might do for a sweater: not all the same color, to be spun up and bobbin-swapped as needed to make the singles come out consistently. Not at all. This is 8 ounces of each color -- and we decided to do them 4 ounces at a time, so she would have each color as quickly as possible, with the second half coming later.

So, I have to spin 4 ounces, ply it, repeat until done. How can it hope to remain consistent?

Here are my tips:

1. Keep your sample card handy. Mine has actual Paternayan's (the source yarn to base everything on!) wound around it to see the twist angle in the ply, split into its singles and wound around it to see the diameter of the single, and fluffed out to see the fiber in the single.

Every time I start a new color, and at random points as I spin that color, I compare back to that source yarn. At least once per ounce during the singles, and at the start of plying to make sure I have my rhythm right.

2. Focus. I don't drift off into conversations -- this fiber doesn't come with me to spin-ins, though the plying might, it's not as hard to get right. All spun at home. I've lost the thread of Stargate Atlantis entirely since I am paying more attention to the yarn than to the plot.

3. Use the same speed and tension each time. On my e-spinner, I set the dial the same; on my treadle wheel, I use the same ratio. And, I always back the brake band's tension off to soft-as-will-draw-on as I start each bobbin, since as the bobbin fills, the brake tension gets tightened bit-by-bit. Forget that, and the fiber yanks onto the flyer faster than I can say "boo!"

4. Use the same spinning style each time. If you start out spinning worsted, spin it all worsted. If you start out spinning with double-drafting, spin it all that way. Whichever method you pick, stick with it. This yarn, I spin with double-drafting. It's production spinning, and that's my fastest way to get the yardage on the wheel.

For plying, I have been using The Gentle Art of Plying as my plying method, but recently re-learned Alden Amos' plying method (see my youTube video embedded here; it is described in his Big Book of Handspinning).



Amos' plying method is continuous, always moving toward the wheel, which was gentler on my e-spinner and let it spin for longer before heating up the motor. I could do the whole 4-plus ounces in one sitting. It takes me about an hour to ply 4 ounces (400 yards) at 1200 rpm, close to top speed, on my e-spinner. [ For the techs out there .. that works out to 5 twists per inch. About right, for the ply twist for this yarn. ]

5. Measure and adjust. Not only do I work to stay on-task during the four ounces, but once it's done, I skein it up with a yardage meter (since I'm paid by the yard, it does double-duty). That tells me if I stayed in the target range. I should get about 100 yards an ounce. If it's too short, then it was too thick or too dense (spinning style - worsted is denser than woolen, or too much twist compacting it). If it's too long, then it was too thin or too airy (not enough twist will pouf out more in the plying). I make a note of the ones noticeably outside the target (over 10% off), and let the weaver know if a color might be a little thinner or thicker than the others, so she can compensate in the weaving.

More than anything else, that sample card and staying on-task keep the yarn within bounds. The medium wool that I'm spinning -- some Border Leicester, some Jacob, some Romney -- all feels about the same, and all will spin into a slightly finer yarn than my target if my goal were fine spinning.

Now, if all your fiber is the same color, you can spin a whole bunch of bobbins-full of singles, and then randomly pick from the singles to ply. That way, you can ply early singles by later singles or totally randomize, so your yarn diameter varies either as little as possible, or as randomly as possible. But I didn't have that option in this spinning journey. If you want to hear about spinning for a sweater's worth of fiber, Amy King has a great article on Knitty, Spin me a sweater!

I just sent off the most recent 2 pounds to the tapestry weaver, shown here, bringing the total to 6 pounds, and got 2 more pounds to spin. All in all, it will be about a full year's journey to complete the 10 pounds. I have all sorts of luscious fibers lined up to treat myself with when my hands want a break from the medium wool. Pygora, Alpaca, Silk, and my own precious Llama -- all for laceweight. I'm thinking, though, I might want to dive into the stash for some wool/silk blend to spin into a thick single and tame with rough finishing, for a total change of pace. Or not -- 4-ply sock yarns are also on my spinning want-to's.

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So, how fun was Madrona? Wow. Franklin Habit's class on photography was eye-opening. I had a terrific time teaching a dozen or so folks the basics of spindling in the rotunda, did some stash enhancement to my silk weaving yarn at the Habu Textiles booth, picked up some lovely pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms for learn to spin kits, and got to catch up with a variety of friends from hither and yon, including meeting several face to face for the first time. Syne, Sarah, Tasha, Anne-Marie, and many others -- however fleeting our hello's may have been, I always treasure meeting friends. And new friends, too -- Taryn, John, Selah, Judith W - how cool to meet you!

If you didn't get to take one of my classes, there are e-books for all three of them on my website; Spinning Self-Striping Socks and the Mitts of Experience has always been fun to teach (see the review by kayak on ravelry for some hints why), and I'm pleased to announce two brand-new e-books for the other two classes, Power Spinning and the All That Yarn Scarf, and Silk on Spindles and the Lacey Vertical Rib Scarf. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to be on an email list for email announcements of upcoming workshops, let me know -- there are some fun ones coming up in March with Sheep & Socks as the theme.

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I ran across a great quote on You, Simplified worth repeating:

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own ~Bruce Lee.

How cool is that. Exactly. I hope you, dear reader, use my blog exactly that way: learn the useful, forget the useless, and add your own ideas into the mix.

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© February 25, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Where does 'tabby' come from?

By Amelia © January 16, 2011

In the last offering of Weave Now: Basic Rigid Heddle Weaving, a question came up that put me to researching: Where does the term 'Tabby' come from?

I felt that it was likely it had a non-English root, given it sounds nothing like "Plain Weave", which is what tabby basically is. In fact, it comes from an Arabic place name where a striped silk cloth was woven.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary,

The English word tabby is from the French tabis, "a rich, watered silk (originally striped)," which is from Middle French atabis (14c.), which is from the Arabic attabiya, from Attabiy, a neighborhood of Baghdad where the cloth originated. The neighborhood was named for prince 'Attab of the Omayyad dynasty (661-750 AD).

The same term applied to tabby cats is due to their stripey appearance -- the original tabby cloth had a striped or rippled appearance.

In today's weaving lingo, tabby is usually used more specifically, to be the plain weave ground a fancier pattern is tied down with. Overshot weaving often says 'alternate with tabby' -- you weave a row of overshot with its long floats, a row of tabby to lock it in place, and so on through the overshot pattern.

But with the amazing breadth of historical information on websites like the online weaving archive and the past issues of Weaver's Craft and Handwoven floating around online sale lists, you will often still see tabby used to mean basic plain weave.

So it's no surprise that the term tabby creeps into my speech when I teach Weave Now: Introduction to Rigid Heddle Weaving. I have a new session starting up this week, January 16th, 2011, online (signups are on Weavolution), with classes on Wednesdays via webcam. I also have a local class at Peninsula Community College starting in February, on Tuesday evenings (sign up by calling the college, 360-452-9277, Course C-AE 053, item N145).

Let's Weave!

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© January 16, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog